ETC blogs: City Stereo

June 12, 2009

Each of the finalists from our 2009 Emerging Talent Competition will be performing at this year’s Festival. Ahead of their trip down to Somerset, we’ve asked them to write a blog telling us about their experience of the competition and their plans for the Festival. Our third blog is from Salisbury indie-poppers City Stereo.

City Stereo have been pretty crazy busy since the ETC finals, as we have been finishing off our debut album which we’ll be releasing later this year. Lots of time has been spent in the studio, and it’s coming together really nicely, we can’t wait for people to hear it. We are preparing to release this independently, subject to label interest, so have also been doing a great amount of planning, research, promo etc which has eaten up a lot of the 2 months since the finals.

We’ve been keeping busy on the live front, and have had some extremely fun shows, with our audiences getting bigger and bigger all the time. All of this of course, is building up to Glastonbury which is going to be something else!

We just can’t wait! I don’t think it’s really going to hit home that WE are playing GLASTONBURY festival until we take to the stage, even now it’s still surreal.

I’m just so glad we entered! In fact, we very almost didn’t… it was by chance that I suddenly remembered about the competition having entered it before, thinking "I’m sure the Glasto competition is run around now. I’ll check it out just in case" so I looked it up, and there it was. 1 hour from the deadline! So at 11pm on the final day for submissions, I entered the band… and I’ve been thanking my lucky stars since. This whole whirlwind ride was only an hour away from not happening at all!

From there we got the call informing us of the amazing news, and to be honest, it didn’t really sink in! I was delighted, but part of me was thinking, "Maybe there’s been a mistake, maybe they called the wrong band or something?" Because there was that element of self-doubt, we actually didn’t tell anyone about it until it was up on the Glastonbury, and Q websites. Then we started to be believe it that little bit more!

Obviously, we were over the moon. US… GLASTONBURY… WOW!!!

Next up was the live final; a great experience. We got to meet some top people, play with some awesome bands, all of whom are very different from us in style, it was a real pleasure. We were pretty happy with our performance on the night. I’d be lying if I said it all went swimmingly though… Our drummer Ben felt something snap in his hand on the first song and was playing through the pain barrier for the rest of the set. He did a great job, as we took a look at his hand after the show, and it looked like he was holding a golf ball in his palm! Of all the times for that to happen! It was never going to stop him, the man is a true pro.

We also had the pleasure of meeting Michael Eavis, and we can’t thank him and the team enough for giving up and coming bands like us a chance. Being an ETC finalist has certainly boosted our profile, and we’ve secured a number of other festival performances over the summer. It’s also been terrific experience that will hold us in good stead for anything that may lie ahead.

Now we are all counting down to the performance. The Queens Head stage, Friday, 1.50pm. Game on! We have also been asked to play the Avalon Crew Stage on the Thursday around 8pm, which we are also looking forward to, as well as playing some live acoustic tracks for Worthy FM on Sunday. We are super eager to introduce the people of Glastonbury to our little pop-rock band from Salisbury. We just hope they like what they hear, and enjoy the performances.

As for future hopes for the band, right now we are all about making our album the biggest success it can be. We’ve put everything into this, and we just want as many people to hear it and enjoy it as possible. We hope this can reach out to as many people as possible, and that we will continue to go from strength to strength. Ultimately, the dream would be to live off of our music. This is what we love doing, it’s our passion, and it’s all any of us ever want to do.

With 2 singles, 2 music videos, our album, and loads of shows (including 2 UK tours) in the pipeline, this year is going to be massive for us. It all kicks off with Glastonbury, and hopefully, this is just the beginning for City Stereo.